Thanksgiving

Wow, been a while since I updated this thing again. I just can’t seem to get into the habit of keeping stuff up-to-date on here. Ah well. I suppose it gives me something to do when the boredom sets in while I’m working.

Tonight the day shift guy ahead of me wanted to attend some event this evening, so they asked me to come in a couple hours early. It’s surprising how much difference (in a bad way) two hours can make. I feel like it’s 3:00 or 4:00 and it’s only about 1:30. Yeesh.

Fortunately, the clients have been really easy so far tonight. Here’s hoping that the dude doesn’t get a bee in his bonnet. If he sleeps through until I’m off shift, that would be wonderful.

As far as other life goes, I’ve been pretty busy. The classes I have this semester aren’t really difficult, but they certainly take up a fair amount of time. Then there’s always dance, percussion ensemble, a novel to write, and so on and so forth. Very vexing.

Fortunately, life is looking up when it comes to time. I registered a week or two ago, and things worked out far more perfectly than I would have guessed possible. Originally I thought I was in trouble because the only two real classes that I wanted to take (Advanced Creative Writing and Thesis for Soc) happened at the exact same time. Then I discovered that the Thesis class only meets about 10-12 times in the semester and that both sides were willing to compromise. Add to that the fact that the registrar only requires a tiny little form with signatures from both professors, and I was able to register for a semester in which I will only ever attend three hours of class a week. Hot damn.

Of course, I’ll be pretty busy nonetheless. The reason that I was hoping for such a tiny schedule was because I want to devote the lion’s share of my time to doing my thesis. It’s going to be a very thesis-oriented semester, since all of my classes (except for dance) are focused on the thesis (Thesis, Creative Writing, and an independent study for soc). This makes me really happy. Being able to learn how to make my own schedule is going to be great, particularly since it’s a skill I’ll definitely need after college. That I get to experiment in the safe environment of Whitman is about the best thing ever.

In less happy news, I wasn’t able to find transportation home for Thanksgiving thanks to the fact that I wasn’t willing to give up either weekend of work. The good side of this is that I’ll be able to do a bit of subbing for VRS during this week, so I’ll have a little extra income. On the other hand, I don’t get a Thanksgiving dinner, which sucks hardcore. Maybe I’ll be able to find other people who are Thanksgiving-less and we can figure something out. That would be nice.

Sadly, thanks to my being busy, I have had to take the Idol Bat off the air for this semester. This is a damn shame, since I really love the Idol Bat and there has been some really juicy stuff going on at Whitman that I would have loved to satirize. Ah well; perhaps I shall get it back up and running next semester (I’m certainly hoping so).

I went to see the new James Bond movie, Casino Royale, with my remaining housemates yesterday, and was really surprised when it was a really good movie. Who’d have thought a Bond movie would have some actual character in it? I was very surprised. I haven’t seen a Bond movie since Goldeneye because they’re usually so terrible on so many levels. I was really glad I agreed to go see this one.

Thanks to the fact that I’m a shareware junkie, I’ve been finding some really cool software recently. The best one that I’ve found recently is Mac-only (so no use to any of you silly PC-heads), but it’s about the perfect software for writing and planning academic papers, theses, or whatever. Ironically, I don’t really have much use for the program (thanks to the fact that Avenir and VoodooPad serve all my thesis needs), but I’ve been recommending it to all sorts of people. The program is called Scrivener, and the latest beta (it’s very close to release) is available here. Definitely give it a try if you write stuff and use a Mac.

SpamSieve and MailTags were my other two hot finds. There’s so much sweet software out there. It amazes even me, sometimes. SpamSieve in particular has been a God-send; I haven’t had a single piece of spam make it to my inbox since installing it, and it’s only had two falsely labeled messages. So nice.

And I think with that it’s about time that I called this monster a post and figured out how else to kill time. Maybe I’ll watch a movie. My brain is certainly too fried to do much else.